Free to Educate Well

As a veteran homeschooler and creator of products that empower moms to educate with excellence, it is my heart’s cry to encourage, build up, and say to every homeschooler I encounter with those weary and worried-filled eyes, “You can do this!” 

You can do this well. You can educate your children better than the reigning system of education.

I so long to see moms untie the heavy burdens they—and others—have strung upon their backs. To be set free from those heavy burdens. Burdens that weigh them down with guilt, insecurity, and crippling fear. Burdens born from illogical expectations created by a society that has been doing education incorrectly for more than a hundred years.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

EDUCATING FROM A PLACE OF REST

God wants you to homeschool from a place of rest. He wants you to let go and let Him be your guide, your inspiration. Let Him be your children’s teacher, the One who will lead them to genius ideas and innovative thoughts. 

He created your children for a purpose. And it is His desire to lead them to that purpose. But we first need to let go of the long-held beliefs that keep us weighed down and worried. 

The biggest problem we face as homeschoolers is our understanding of what education is. Here’s a fact: our society has gotten school wrong. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, American schools get a big fat F in every arena of education. And yet we let the insidious lies of what education should look like permeate our peace and handicap our freedom—the freedom to educate as the Holy Spirit leads. The freedom to do things differently. 

The freedom to be original and creative in our homeschool.

Here’s the thing: today’s educational system was an experiment. An experiment instituted during the industrial revolution. An experiment designed, not to create thinkers, but to create people who could memorize and follow instructions … excellent factory workers. 

The experiment created a system that was diametrically opposed to fostering a child’s natural, divinely-given curiosity. It was opposed to what education truly is: nurturing a child’s creative thinking and inventive intelligence through the ideas they come across in their learning. 

This educational experiment was quite successful in its aims to churn out mindless workers, but disastrously detrimental to children and the development of thinkers. And so children leave school never having been given a chance to discover their unique gifts, to hone their interests, to learn their purpose. 

DEPROGRAMMING TO DO BETTER

Deprogramming from the brainwashing indoctrination of the modern educational model is one of the first and hardest lessons a homeschool parent should attempt. It’s hard though. Even when we think we’ve discovered the best way to educate, society keeps telling us how and what a child’s education should be. Yes. The very same society that is doing it wrong! 

Why do we allow ourselves to harbor that incessant niggling little doubt that maybe we are going to fail our children? That their way is the right way? 

I believe it’s a massive societal case of peer pressure. We keep hearing and seeing the “supposed” success of the system with children who have successfully jumped through all the hoops rewarded with honors. Off they trot to elite colleges where they will continue on the meaningless obstacle course toward another graduation, yet still unaware of who they truly are—unable to discover the plans and purposes God has for them because they are single-mindedly focused on winning the education game.

We can do better for our children.

We can take them off the bureaucratic manmade hamster wheel of education and give them the freedom and time to learn and grow the way God intended. 

You see, inside every child is unique genius. Our primary job as educators is to connect our children to the Author of that genius so that they might learn from Him how best to nurture their gift. Our job is not to fill them with meaningless facts, data, and vocabulary. As they are led by God, they’ll naturally gravitate toward the facts, data, and vocabulary God intends for them to know. 

Our job as educators is to cultivate the imagination, creativity, and unique ideas that inspire our children so that they may be continually receptive to the Holy Spirit, their True Educator.

He is continually working in the hearts and minds of our children, awakening their curiosity, inspiring their imaginations, and leading them to seek knowledge and truth. 

If we can remember this, we will be set free.

SETTING OURSELVES FREE

But we must let go. Let go of the lies we accepted as truth regarding education. Let go of fear. Let go of guilt. Let go of all that robs you of peace. 

When our Lord promised to give us rest, He meant for us to experience that rest even as we homeschool. This rest is for you. For today. You can homeschool from this place of rest. 

If it feels heavy, if you are feeling anxious, turn to Him. Set it before Him. He wants you free of those fears. Free of the pressure.

Free to educate your children well.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:29-30

You are uniquely and divinely designed to educate the unique and divinely designed children God gave you. God has a specific plan for each of your children. He will guide and show you the way He wants you to go. 

For this God is our God for ever and ever: He will be our guide even unto the end. Psalm 48:14

Remember the words of Charlotte Mason, 

"But there is one great, perfect and satisfying Intimacy open to us all,––whether we are lonely because we feel 'superior,' or because we know ourselves to be 'poor things,' unworthy of much notice. We are abashed when we think of the promotion open to every poor human soul. "This is eternal life," said our Lord, "to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent"; and this knowledge, this exalted intimacy, is open to us all, on one condition only––if we choose. Feeling as we do that we ourselves are not good or clever enough for the friendship of some people, and are much too good and clever for that of some others, it is startling to know that this supreme friendship is to be had by each of us if he will, because every human soul has capacity for the knowledge of God; not for mathematics, perhaps, nor for science, nor for politics, but for that vast knowledge which floods the soul like a sea to swim in––the knowledge of God."